Did Travis Scott’s brand new ‘K-Pop’ music video also leave you asking whether the visual’s mysterious pink mansion is a spaceship or an actual house? Same here, but we found the answer: The location extraordinaire that La Flame and The Weeknd vibe in in the video (sans the song’s third performer, Bad Bunny) is a real house, it’s sitting on the French Riveria and it was listed for sale for a whooping $420 (!) million not too long ago. Curtain up for: Le Palais Bulles, also known as ‘The Bubble Palace’.
The 1,200 m² architectural masterpiece’s 29 rooms, including 10 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms spread over four flours, altogether challenge conventional notions of living spaces, thanks to its renowned Hungarian architect: Antti Lovag saw straight lines ‘as an aggression against nature’ and designed the villa’s bulbous, bubble-like domes with fluid, organic shapes for a harmonious symbiosis with the surrounding Mediterranean Sea.
Built for French industrialist Pierre Bernard in the 1980s and acquired in 1992 by Italo-French designer Pierre Cardin, the mansion then rose to worldwide popularity thanks to its outerwordly, spaced-out architecture.
While the house has hosted numerous extravagant events and gatherings in the past, ranging from events by Rolls-Royce or Microsoft to runway shows by Christian Dior, there is one slight bummer though: The Palais Bulles is virtually impossible to really live in – not even Pierre Carding himself inhabited the mansion, but instead treated it as a piece of art. And is it just us, or does the following quote scream ‘Utopia’?
“This palace has become my own bit of paradise. Its cellular forms have long reflected the outward manifestations of the image of my creations. It is a museum where I exhibit the works of contemporary designers and artists.”
Pierre Cardin on Le Palais Bulles
Despite voices in the world of architecture getting louder to exhibit the avant-garde house to the public as a permanent museum (given that the house did not sell since Cardin’s death in 2020), at least for now, we can only hope to someday step foot into the dream-come-true that is Le Palais Bulles. Until then, you can enjoy the piece of art in all its organic beauty (alongside the Stade de Nice) in Travis Scott’s ‘K-Pop’ music video:
